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Today I have been keeping Twitter window open, watching messages tagged #10yearsago scroll by. It’s striking. This is the sort of grass-roots expression of hopes and dreams that adventurous journalists used to travel the world for, and compile into coffee table books. Now we can all see it live for free.

As striking as this is, I notice that almost all of the traffic is in English. The only other language reasonably well represented is Indonesian. Curious, though it is the 4th largest country by population, and social media are hugely popular here.

I’ve also really enjoyed watching the clock strike midnight in different time zones. Here in Jakarta, the NYE conversations of my friends in California — 13 hours behind — seem so last night. I’m nursing a hangover, they’re working on one.

It’s so easy to forget the world outside what you know. I hope that global media like Twitter will help us to remember everyone else. The technological means have arrived with a roar, but we’re still not really talking to one another. What is the next step?